No Profit, Lots of Fun

December 7, 2006

The following paragraph by Matthew Yglesias caught my eye:

To me, at least, this is the real moral of the story. Peer-production of digital media probably will produce a fair quantity of awesome popular stuff lurking amidst the vast pool of dreck. And well-designed services will let the awesome stuff rise to the top and the dreck fade to the background, rendering those services awesome and popular. But -- and here's the rub -- having something awesome and popular just may not prove to be especially lucrative. In the past, a popular television show or a popular album or a popular film or a popular distribution channel guaranteed you vast sums of money. In the future, that just may not be the case. The very most popular things will generate some income, enough to live off of and continue financing new projects, but not the sort of gigantic windfalls associated with 20th century media hits. And lots of other things -- including reasonably popular ones -- will only generate trivial levels of income. And they'll continue to be made. Made by people who think its fun, or who derive some benefit from their work other than direct monetary income.

I can't imagine anything more healthy than the scenario sketched at the end of this paragraph. If it came about it would represent nothing less than the liberation of the imagination from the machine of celebrity.

When we talk about cultural accomplishment, we are assuming the Michael Jordanization of creativity. It is so ingrained that it is difficult to get a fast break and rearrange our thinking. I mean we assume that in a world of millions there will be a rare individual who is head and shoulders above the crowd of other excellent competitors. The intent in our reading and viewing is to locate the Michael Jordan's of these different creative endeavors.. these will be the nobel prize winners and geniuses.

But as the population of the world grows, and we become more interlinked, this model will come to seem more and more ridiculous. There are too many creative people out there, able to produce too many interesting things. There is no best.. no Michael Jordan.. out there. Or rather, there are millions of them.. people whose creative energies are worthwhile and engaging.

In a world where we cannot read or view the work of all these people, what should one do? As I see it, what we are looking for are communities of creativity. Networks in which people can exchange their work and not worry about getting thrown up to the top of the pop charts.. or any sort of chart. And that brings us back to Yglesias' point that with peer-production of digital media there may be lots of people doing interesting things, but the profit level will fall considerably from the levels seen previously.

There has never been anything less helpful to the playing of sports than the idea of the superstar. There must be a direct relationship between the professionalization of a sport and the number of people who actually go out and play for fun.. (although video games offer the chance of playing like a superstar). In the creative world the same holds true. The great American novels and must-see movies tend to monopolize our attention.. and ultimately take away our get-up-and-go creative energies. We need new forms that are not out to dominate the horizons and suck our creative air. While we're at it, let's make some changes to the academic world, which also operates with the superstar model.. You'd almost think that interesting thoughts were owned by people who knew how to footnote and attend the right conferences.

The only thing we would lose is the dangled dream of instant superstardom and money to burn.. but we can do without that, I should think.